I never expected Harold Bloom to appear in The Onion outside of a headline like “Harold Bloom Exhumes Shakespeare, Eats Him” or “Harold Bloom’s Mother Barges Into Bathroom While He’s Reading Harry Potter” or “New Haven-Area Outback Steakhouse Offers Bloomin’ Onion With Real Bits of Harold Bloom.” That kind of thing. I did not expect the satirical paper to actually sit down with Bloom and discuss Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.

But they did. Fear not — this being Bloom, there is a comedic element to the proceedings. Take this, for instance:

The Onion: You’ve been extremely critical of the politicization of teaching literature…

Bloom: Critical, young man, is hardly the word. I stand against it like Jeremiah prophesying in Jerusalem.

He claims it took him three tries to get through McCarthy’s bloody western, so perhaps the third time will be the charm for me, too. And he offers this spot-on summary of Don DeLillo’s Underworld: “a little long for what it does but nevertheless [it’s] the culmination of what Don can do.”